Hero of Alexandria #1

Hero of Alexandria

Automatons in the Renaissance. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. Help us improve this article! Contact our editors with your feedback. You may find it helpful to search within the site to see how similar or related subjects are covered. Any text you add should be original, not copied from other sources. At the bottom of the article, feel free to list any sources that support your changes, so that we can fully understand their context.

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Internet URLs are the best. Thank You for Your Contribution! There was a problem with your submission. Please try again later. Keep Exploring Britannica Internet. Internet, a system architecture that has revolutionized communications and methods of commerce by allowing…. Steve Jobs, cofounder of Apple Computer, Inc. If you prefer to suggest your own revision of the article, you can go to edit mode requires login. Thank you for your feedback. Discover your curiosity type, learn about curious people, and sign up for our Curiosity Challenge. When a coin was placed in the slot of the vending machine, it would rest on a platform.

The weight of the coin would push the platform down, opening a valve and dispensing a consistent trickle of holy water. Hero's coin-operated holy water vending machines inspired the creation of many other vending machines lending to a financial gain. Another fantastic machine was Hero's automatic temple opener. This device used heat and pneumatics to open a set of temple doors. To open the doors, the priest lit a fire on the altar, heating the air within and causing it to expand.

This expansion in volume forced water out of the sphere and into the bucket, which moved downwards under the extra weight. This bucket was connected to a rope coiled around a spindle and, as the bucket moved downwards, this spindle revolved, making the doors open. The first water pumps were probably designed by Ctesibius, as Heron frequently mentions his earlier works in his treatise. The force pump was later widely used in the Roman world for fighting fires. Hero was not just a brilliant engineer. He was also an accomplished mathematician and theoretician. He came up with the basics of what is now known as Fermat's principle.

He described a principle of reflection, which stated that a ray of light that goes from point A to point B, suffering any number of reflections on flat mirrors, in the same medium, has a smaller path length than any nearby path. As a mathematician Hero came up with the first approximation in Greece of a number's square root. Today, his name is most closely associated with Heron's Formula for finding the area of a triangle from its side lengths.

The imaginary number, or imaginary unit, is also noted to have been first observed by Hero while calculating the volume of a pyramidal frustum. He also wrote a number of books on mathematics, including Metrica. It is almost certain that Hero taught at the Musaeum which included the famous Library of Alexandria, because most of his writings appear as lecture notes for courses in mathematics, mechanics, physics and pneumatics. Although the field was not formalized until the 20th century, it is thought that the work of Hero, his automated devices in particular, represents some of the first formal research into cybernetics.

Application in solid geometry A square frustum, with volume equal to the height times the Heronian mean of the square areas The Heronian mean may be used in finding the volume of a frustum of a pyramid or cone. The volume is equal to the product of the height of the frustum and the Heronian mean of the areas of the opposing parallel faces. Relation to other means The Heronian mean of the numbers A and B is a weighted mean of their arithmetic and geometric means: Pneumatic compressed-air locomotives like this were often used to haul trains in mines, where steam engines posed a risk of explosion.

This one is preserved H. Pneumatic systems used in industry are commonly powered by compressed air or compressed inert gases. A centrally located and electrically powered compressor powers cylinders, air motors, and other pneumatic devices. A pneumatic system controlled through manual or automatic solenoid valves is selected when it provides a lower cost, more flexible, or safer alternative to electric motors and actuators. Pneumatics also has applications in dentistry, construction, mining, and other areas. Examples of pneumatic systems and components Air brakes on buses and trucks Air brakes on trains Air compressors Air engines for pneumatically powered vehicles Barostat systems used in Neurogastroenterology and for researc The 1st century is considered part of the Classical era, epoch, or historical period.

During this period, Europe, North Africa, and the Near East fell under increasing domination by the Roman Empire, which continued expanding, most notably conquering Britain under the emperor Claudius AD The reforms introduced by Augustus during his long reign stabilized the empire after the turmoil of the previous century's civil wars. Later in the century the Julio-Claudian dynasty, which had been founded by Augustus, came to an end with the suicide of Nero in AD There followed the famous Year of Four Emperors, a brief period of civil war and instability, whi Look up heron in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

A heron is a type of wading bird. Heron may also refer to: Diagram of a Corinthian column showing a visible entasis bulge at "D" In architecture, entasis is the application of a convex curve to a surface for aesthetic purposes. Its best-known use is in certain orders of Classical columns that curve slightly as their diameter is decreased from the bottom upward. It also may serve an engineering function regarding strength. Creating the illusion of greater strength or perception of height may have been an objective in the application of entasis. Examples Examples of this design principle may be found in cultures throughout the world, from ancient times to contemporary architecture.

The first known use of entasis was in the construction of Egyptian pyramids. It also may be observed among Classical period Greek column designs, built a thousand years later, for example, in the A snack food vending machine made in Gashapon vending machines Newspaper vending machines in Munich, Germany An automobile parking ticket machine in the Czech Republic A vending machine is an automated machine that provides items such as snacks, beverages, cigarettes and lottery tickets to consumers after money, a credit card, or specially designed card is inserted into the machine.

Vending machines exist in many countries, and in more recent times, specialized vending machines that provide less common products compared to traditional vending machine items have been created and provided to consumers. History 17th-century German depiction of Hero of Alexandria, engineer in 1st-century Roman Egypt who invented an early vending machine The earliest known reference to a vending machine is in the work of Hero of Alexandria, an engineer and mathematician in first-century Roman Egypt.

RoboThespian, from Engineered Arts A humanoid robot is a robot with its body shape built to resemble the human body. The design may be for functional purposes, such as interacting with human tools and environments, for experimental purposes, such as the study of al locomotion, or for other purposes. In general, humanoid robots have a torso, a head, two arms, and two legs, though some forms of humanoid robots may model only part of the body, for example, from the waist up. Some humanoid robots also have heads designed to replicate human facial features such as eyes and mouths.

Condensed Histories - Hero of Alexandria, Inventor of the first vending machine and steam engine!

Androids are humanoid robots built to aesthetically resemble humans. It also competes in the RoboCup soccer championship.

Enon was created to be a personal assistant. The windlass is a well-known application of the wheel and axle. The wheel and axle are one of six simple machines identified by Renaissance scientists drawing from Greek texts on technology. A hinge or bearing supports the axle, allowing rotation. It can amplify force; a small force applied to the periphery of the large wheel can move a larger load attached to the axle.

The wheel and axle can be viewed as a version of the lever, with a drive force applied tangentially to the perimeter of the wheel and a load force applied to the axle, respectively, that are balanced around the hinge which is the fulcrum. The mechanical advantage of the wheel and axle is the ratio of the distances from the fulcrum to the applied loads, or what is the same thing the ratio of the diameter of the wheel and axle. The water organ or hydraulic organ Greek: Consequently, the water organ lacks a bellows, blower, or compressor.

The hydraulic organ is often confused with the hydraulis. The hydraulis is the name of a Greek instrument created by Ctesibius of Alexandria. The hydraulis has a reservoir of air which is inserted into a cistern of water. The air is pushed into the reservoir with hand pumps, and exits the reservoir as pressurized air to blow through the pipes. The reservoir is open on the bottom, allowing water to maintain the pressure on the air as the air supply fluctuates from either the pumps pushing more air in, or the pipes letting air out.

Turnbridge windlass lifting road bridge over Huddersfield Broad Canal Differential windlass The windlass is an apparatus for moving heavy weights.

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Typically, a windlass consists of a horizontal cylinder barrel , which is rotated by the turn of a crank or belt. A winch is affixed to one or both ends, and a cable or rope is wound around the winch, pulling a weight attached to the opposite end. The oldest depiction of a windlass for raising water can be found in the Book of Agriculture published in by the Chinese official Wang Zhen of the Yuan Dynasty fl. One of the oldest surviving fragments of Euclid's Elements, found at Oxyrhynchus and dated to c.

The diagram accompanies Book II, Proposition 5. Some important geometers and their main fields of work, chronologically listed, are: The gnomon is the triangular blade in this sundial. The term is used for a variety of purposes in mathematics and other fields. The ancient Chinese used shadow measurements for creating calendars that are mentioned in several ancient texts.

According to the collection of Zhou Chinese poetic anthologies Classic of Poetry, one of the distant ancestors of King Wen of the Zhou dynasty used to measure gnomon shadow lengths to determine the orientation around the 14th century BC. Timeline of motor and engine technology c.

In historical times, Greek civilization has played one of the major roles in the history and development of mathematics. To this day, a number of Greek mathematicians are considered for their innovations and influence on mathematics. There has been a large community of Greeks in Egypt, also known as Egyptiotes Greek: Herodotus visited Egypt in the 5th century BC and claimed that the Greeks were one of the first groups of foreigners that ever lived in Egypt.

Siculus reports that all the Greek cities were destroyed during the cataclysm, but the Egyptian cities including Heliopolis and Sais survived. In 7th century BC, aft A machine or mechanical device is a mechanical structure that uses power to apply forces and control movement to perform an intended action. Machines can be driven by animals and people, by natural forces such as wind and water, and by chemical, thermal, or electrical power, and include a system of mechanisms that shape the actuator input to achieve a specific application of output forces and movement.

They can also include computers and sensors that monitor performance and plan movement, often called mechanical systems. Renaissance natural philosophers identified six simple machines which were the elementary devices that put a load into motion, and calculated the ratio of output force to input force, known today as mechanical advantage. Examples include a wide range of vehicles, such as automobiles, boats and airplanes, appliances in the home and office, He is best known for his discovery of previously unknown texts in the Archimedes Palimpsest, and for his edition of Euclid's Elements that T.

Heath translated into English. He also published an edition of Ptolemy's Almagest. Many of his editions are still in use today. Archimedes Palimpsest Heiberg inspect The Savery Steam Pump - the first commercially successful steam powered device, built by Thomas Savery The first recorded rudimentary steam engine was the aeolipile described by Heron of Alexandria in 1st-century Roman Egypt. In , Thomas Newcomen's atmospheric engine became the first commercially successful engine using the principle of the piston and cylinder, which was the fundamental type steam engine used until the early 20th century.

The steam engine was used to pump water out of coal mines During the Industrial Revolution, steam engines started to replace water and wind power, and eventually became the dominant source of power in the late 19th century and remaining so into the early decades of the 20th century, when the more efficient steam turbine and the internal combustion engine Fountains were originally purely functional, connected to springs or aqueducts and used to provide drinking water and water for bathing and washing to the residents of cities, towns and villages.

Until the late 19th century most fountains operated by gravity, and needed a source of water higher than the fountain, such as a reservoir or aqueduct, to make the water flo Mercury thermometer mercury-in-glass thermometer for measurement of room temperature. Daniel Fahrenheit's application of mercury and a standardized temperature scale for liquid-in-glass thermometers ushered in a new era of accuracy and precision in thermometry.

A thermometer has two important elements: Thermometers are widely used in industries to monitor pr A V6 internal combustion engine from a Mercedes-Benz An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one form of energy into mechanical energy. Internal combustion engines are heat engines that burn fuel in a combustion chamber to extract work from the pressure of expanding gases. Electric motors convert electrical energy into mechanical motion; pneumatic motors use compressed air; and clockwork motors in wind-up toys use elastic energy.

In biological systems, molecular motors, like myosins in muscles, use chemical energy to create forces and eventually motion. Terminology The word engine derives from Old French engin, from the Latin ingenium—the root of the word ingenious. Pre-industrial weapons of war, such as catapults, trebuchets and battering rams, were called siege engines, and knowledge of how to construct them was often treated as a military secret.

The word gin, as in cotton gin, is short for engine. The concentric siphon or annular siphon is a rarer embodiment of the siphon which has the discharge tube separate from the inlet tube, with the opening of the outlet within the inlet tube. It has the advantages of taking up less space and of being able to be constructed with straight tubes and standard fittings, with no need for forming a U in the tube.

The concentric siphon was first described by Ancient Greek engineer Hero of Alexandria as demonstration 2 in the book Pneumatica. The concentric siphon was used extensively in toilet cisterns [2] as a means of delivering a bulk discharge of water to flush a toilet etc. It is also used in wastewater treatment systems. A minor use is in some types of Soxhlet extractor, where a concentric siphon is noted in advertising material[3] as being more robust and having a lower volume than a U siphon.

The Savery Engine — the world's first commercially useful steam engine: Owing to the relevance of thermodynamics in much of science and technology, its history is finely woven with the developments of classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, magnetism, and chemical kinetics, to more distant applied fields such as meteorology, information theory, and biology physiology , and to technological developments such as the steam engine, internal combustion engine, cryogenics and electricity generation.

The development of thermodynamics both drove and was driven by atomic theory. It also, albeit in a subtle manner, motivated new directions in probability and statistics; see, for example, the timeline of thermodynamics. History Contributions from antiquity The ancients viewed heat as that related to fire. In BC, the ancient Egyptians view Algebra from Arabic "al-jabr", literally meaning "reunion of broken parts"[1] is one of the broad parts of mathematics, together with number theory, geometry and analysis.

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In its most general form, algebra is the study of mathematical symbols and the rules for manipulating these symbols;[2] it is a unifying thread of almost all of mathematics. The more basic parts of algebra are called elementary algebra; the more abstract parts are called abstract algebra or modern algebra. Elementary algebra is generally considered to be essential for any study of mathematics, science, or engineering, as well as such applications as medicine and economics.

Abstract algebra is a major area in advanced mathematics, studied primarily by professional math In Rome and the modern West, he is known as Hercules, with whom the later Roman emperors, in particular Commodus and Maximian, often identified themselves.

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The Romans adopted the Greek version of his life and works essentially unchanged, but added anecdotal detail of their own, some of it linking the hero with the geography of the Central Mediterranean. Details of his cult were adapted to Rome as well. Origin Many popular stories were told of his life, the most famo A display of two outflow water clocks from the Ancient Agora Museum in Athens. The top is an original from the late 5th century BC. The bottom is a reconstruction of a clay original.

Incredible Ancient Machines Invented By Hero Of Alexandria – An Engineer Far Ahead Of His Time

Water clocks are one of the oldest time-measuring instruments. The bowl-shaped outflow is the simplest form of a water clock and is known to have existed in Babylon and in Egypt around the 16th century BC. Other regions of the world, including India and China, also have early evidence of water clocks, but the earliest dates are less certain. Some authors, however, claim that water clocks appeared in China as early as BC. Rick Grimes is a fictional character and the protagonist in the comic book series The Walking Dead and the television series of the same name, portrayed by Andrew Lincoln.

Rick Grimes is a small town sheriff's deputy who has a son, Carl, with wife Lori. He awakens from a coma after a life-threatening gun shot wound to find the world overrun by zombies, or "walkers" as they are referred to within the story. In both media, Rick awakens from a coma into the apocalypse and searches for Lori and Carl, and finds them in the Atlanta camp with his best friend, Shane Walsh, and becomes the group's leader.

Although Rick quickly adapts to the notion of killing walkers, he retains his morality towards the living, which puts him Optics began with the development of lenses by the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians, followed by theories on light and vision developed by ancient Greek philosophers, and the development of geometrical optics in the Greco-Roman world.

These earlier studies on optics are now known as "classical optics".

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When an enigmatic scientist named Heron invented the steam engine in 60 A.D., he began an industrial revolution nearly years ahead of schedule. Hero of Alexandria was a mathematician and engineer who was active in his native city of The first vending machine was also one of his constructions; when a coin was introduced via a slot on the top of the machine, a set amount of holy.

The term "modern optics" refers to areas of optical research that largely developed in the 20th century, such as wave optics and quantum optics. Hero's wind-powered organ reconstruction. The book About automata by Hero of Alexandria edition. The Hutchinson dictionary of scientific biography. Hero of Alexandria lived c. Drachmann, "Heron's Windmill", Centaurus, 7 , pp. The Engines of Our Ingenuity. A History of Mathematics: Certainly, all of them wrote in Greek and were part of the Greek intellectual community of Alexandria.

And most modern studies conclude that the Greek community coexisted [ It is, of course, impossible to answer this question definitively. But research in papyri dating from the early centuries of the common era demonstrates that a significant amount of intermarriage took place between the Greek and Egyptian communities [ In addition, even from the founding of Alexandria, small numbers of Egyptians were admitted to the privileged classes in the city to fulfill numerous civic roles.